In the unlikely event that Google manages to pass Twitter, the chance that Google will bypass the client developers, as Twitter did, is 100 percent. That's how corporate platforms work. Right now Google needs the client developers to help them try to climb over a very high wall. Later the market will demand that they ship an official client, the same call that Twitter heard.

The secret for the client guys is that instead of investing in individual platforms owned by huge corporations, they must swallow hard and invest in working with each other. None of them is going to eliminate the competition by doing a better job of sucking up to corporations that own the platforms. Their only chance of winning is if a platform emerges that isn't owned by a corporation.